Crises of Identity
by Dal Niente
Summary: Pre-movie. Wayne learns something, and is unsettled.  Megamind is in jail and confused, but he knows when something isn't right, and he doesn't like the change, and wants to figure out what caused it and fix it.  Part Two: Megamind Fixes It.
1. Part One: Crises of Identity

One-shot. I've had this bouncing around in my Megamind folder since before Cold Fusion went up, and I think I want to publish it. Pre-movie, early in Wayne and Megs' careers. Megs is in jail. Wayne learns something new and is unsettled.

See what you think. Young Megamind sounds different in my head than Present-Day Megamind does. More clinical, more cynical. Iunno. Bad? Good? Review?

**Crises of Identity**

"Seriously, now." The blue alien lowers his voice, and Wayne looks up. Megamind's expression is closed, his eyes cold, all traces of carefree exuberance evaporated. On the other side of the glass, Megamind is the picture of cruel efficiency, and Wayne's eyes narrow. This is a side of Megamind he does not often see. "What is _with_ you lately?"

"What are you talking about?" Wayne truly doesn't know, and it must be obvious, because Megamind does not insist that of course he _must_ know, don't play dumb. He doesn't even blink. His eyes flick over Wayne's face once and his expression darkens further, and then he leans forward. His chair creaks.

"Are you all right?" His voice is even lower, now, but he is almost _glaring_ at Wayne, who is now officially floored and totally incapable of speech. "Only you've been very _odd_ lately, and it's starting to get on my nerves. You don't banter anymore. You're never out in public when we aren't fighting. You're _late_ more than half the time, which is unacceptable, and now you've come to see me in jail. You only do that when you think you've actually hurt me, and our last encounter was fairly low key, so it's something else." He pauses, irritated, but when Wayne only goggles at him, he says, "So, I ask you again. Are you. All right?"

Megamind is really glaring now, and Wayne realizes that some sort of reply is expected of him, and his mouth moves silently as he tries to figure out how to respond to his nemesis. His _nemesis_, who has just asked him if he was _okay_ and actually seems to mean it. That is _so_ wrong on _so_ many levels that his mouth totally bypasses all rational thought and what comes out of it is, "No."

Megamind blinks. Honesty is not something he'd expected. "Why not?"

Wayne snorts. It is more than half nervous laughter, but he blusters through it anyway. "Oh come on, you can't just ask why not."

"It's a perfectly logical response."

Wayne can't exactly argue with that. He rubs a hand over his face, scrubs at his eyes. "You can't _honestly_ think I'd actually tell you."

Megamind's thin blue lips get thinner still, and his gaze sharpens. "Fact: you only come to see me when you think I've been injured. You don't like me, but you rarely actually try to hurt me, which indicates some sort of guilty conscience on your part. Fact: there is no _way_ I could have been hurt during our last encounter, since you only grabbed me and dropped me off here. That's out of character for you; usually you at least _pretend_ to expend effort foiling my plans. Fact: you're here now, which is _also_ out of character because there's nothing for your conscience to bother you about."

His voice is rising in pitch and volume and the other prisoners and visitors are beginning to notice. Wayne looks guiltily around, but Megamind either does not care or does not notice. "_Fact_: you've been _weird_ for the past month and a half. I've already listed several examples, and I do not appreciate having to repeat myself. Fact: people do not abandon all semblance of routine and regular mannerism without a stimulus. Conclusion: something is wrong."

"I just _told_ you it was."

Megamind huffs his irritation through his nose. "Very well. Conclusion: something is wrong, but what baffles me is that you're _here_. Talking to _me_. Your behavior would normally indicate you're worried about me – by the way, your attentions on that count are unwelcome and I do wish you'd stop coming – but we've already covered that _twice_ now. Please don't make me say it a third time."

Wayne stares at him. "I'm not sure I follow you."

"You just – _argh!_" Megamind's entire body spasms as he gives a spastic little flail of frustration that actually helps a lot to put Wayne at his ease. Frustrated-flailing-around Megamind is something he is used to. Sitting-still-and-listing-facts Megamind is sort of creepy.

"All right, _translation_," Megamind says, very slowly and carefully, and plants both hands flat on the table in front of him and leans forward again. "I don't understand what's going on, and I'm not used to that, and I don't like it."

"Seriously?" Wayne speaks without thinking. "You've gotta be kidding me, I mean, sure you're great with science and stuff but socializing has always been completely beyond you…" He stops talking when Megamind slumps and gives him the most derisive look he's ever seen, ever.

"_Seriously?_" Megamind mimics. His lip curls. "Please, give me some credit. I know you, and you know me. I know you're not what the public thinks you are, and you know I'm sharper than I look. And we _both_ know that it takes two to socialize, and if one party isn't receptive…" He shrugs. "But that's not important. What are you doing here?"

Wayne lets out a short, barking laugh. It surprises both of them. "I actually have no idea." What is he supposed to say, really? _My mother told me two months ago that I came from a strange space pod under our Christmas tree, that I'm an alien like you, and I'm just a little bit confused here?_

Megamind is giving him that cold _I-don't-buy-that_ look again, and Wayne clears his throat. "I'll just…I'll just go, then." He stands, and turns to leave.

"Wayne."

He pauses, turns back. Megamind _never_ calls him by his first name.

"I don't like not knowing things."

Wayne knows Megamind well enough by now to hear what he isn't saying, so he sighs and sits back down. "Turns out I'm like you."

It's Megamind's turn to laugh. "I sincerely doubt that," he says, but stops laughing when he realizes Wayne is completely serious. He frowns. "Like me _how_, exactly?"

Wayne draws a deep breath. It's weird, he thinks, that the first person he admits this to is the one person who hates him the most. "I'm…an alien."

Stranger still that Megamind looks totally unfazed. Wayne waits, almost flinching, for some kind of explosive response, but Megamind only sits there and looks at him. "Didn't you hear what I just said? I'm not from Earth." How, he wonders, how can he just _sit there_ all cool and collected? Cool and collected is _my_ job.

"Yeah, and?"

Wayne blinks. "_And_ nothing. That's it. You don't seem surprised."

_Now_ Megamind looks surprised. He looks totally dumbfounded. "You mean you didn't _know?_"

"Was I _supposed_ to know?" Wayne looks as baffled as he sounds. "How did _you_ know?"

Megamind's green eyes flick back and forth a few times, as if reading down a list. He finally settles on, "Our first encounter notwithstanding, wasn't it _obvious?_"

"What about our first encounter should have indicated that I was an alien?" Wayne demands sharply, frantically running over what he remembers of that day in the schoolhouse. "Because I really don't think…"

"You don't remember." Megamind had not expected this. _He_ remembers, of course, and he has always assumed that Wayne does as well. Now, however… Well, he isn't really surprised that Wayne hadn't come to the right conclusion. It isn't the sort of conclusion that a perfectly normal-looking child would make.

Wayne is staring at him, slumped bonelessly against the table, openmouthed. Finally he manages to get out the words, "Remember what?"

"You knocked me off course in an asteroid belt," Megamind says flatly, and Wayne's eyes just about fall out of his head.

"_What?_ What asteroid belt? When was this?"

Megamind tips his head back, thinks for a moment. "Sixteen years, seven months, twelve days and three hours ago. I can be more precise, if you like, but I really don't see the point."

"How do you _know_ all of this?"

"I remember," Megamind tells him. "I remember everything." He rolls his eyes upward, taps one of his temples with a long finger. "This isn't just for show, you know."

Wayne is willing to swear he will never be surprised again, ever, as long as he lives. "Are…are we from the same planet?"

Megamind recoils. "No!" he exclaims, and Wayne probably ought to be offended at all the revulsion Megamind manages to pack into that one word. "_God_, no. We're from the same star system. Wasn't all the information in your shuttle?"

Wayne shrugs. "I don't know. Mom threw my shuttle away with the rest of the wrapping paper, before she realized what it was. It's long gone."

The gaze Megamind sends him is actually pitying. "Your mother is fantastically dense."

It's as close to 'That sucks, I'm really sorry' as Wayne is likely to get from Megamind. He half-smiles. "Thanks."

A long pause stretches between them. The cause of Wayne's confusion confirms several of Megamind's hypotheses, and disproves several others.

"Be that as it may, I fail to see how 'Son, you're an alien' can possibly bother you this much," Megamind says eventually. He is careful to keep his animosity out of his tone; the only way he's going to be able to get things back to the way they were is by fixing Wayne, and he can't do that if his rival is angry. He doesn't like trying to get Wayne to confide in him – especially about this. This is going to involve divulging personal information and revisiting painful memories, and Wayne isn't worth the heartache.

But he wants to have a _rival_ again, not the dead-eyed humorless creature that's been systematically foiling him for the past few weeks, and that _is_ worth a little heartache.

Wayne glares at him.

"I know, I know, I don't like this any more than you do," Megamind snaps. "But who else has the answers? I remember _everything_."

Wayne scowls, then blinks. Other adopted kids can get in touch with their birth parents. Why shouldn't he be able to do the same? Sure, his are a little farther away than most people's, but it could work. "You're smart," he says slowly. "Couldn't you build something that'd let me talk to my…my home world? I'll pay you," he adds desperately, when Megamind's expression slams closed. "I'll pay you whatever you want, just…you're the only one who can do it."

Megamind shakes his head. "I can't."

"C'mon, _please!_" The other boy is desperate. "I know you don't like me, okay, I know you hate me, but I am _begging you_, _Megamind, please_ –"

"And don't think I don't appreciate having you beg me for something, but I really can't do it." He knows perfectly well why Wayne is so upset, he's read enough psychology textbooks. He's even written a few. "Look, if I were able to contact my home world, I would have done it already."

Wayne's shoulders slump. "Why can't you? Can't you figure it out?"

"Of course I can _figure it out_," Megamind says, sounding mildly affronted. "But there'd be no point in building the machine you want. Your world is dead."

Wayne stares, uncomprehending. "What – what do you mean, dead?"

"It's gone. So is mine. Our star collapsed," he says, finally, and Wayne goes white. Thank god the idiot is smart enough to grasp the implications of that simple fact.

"Listen to me, your parents didn't abandon you. They didn't throw you away, they sent you here to save your life."

Wayne looks up, eyes wild, face pale. "You…how did you…"

"I know the beginnings of an abandonment complex when I see one." Megamind draws a deep breath. "Now that we've got that out of the way, can we please go back to our usual routine? You're no _fun_ anymore."

Wayne stands. He's shaky, and his head is spinning, but he manages to nod a few times before he flees.

Megamind peers after him. That hasn't fixed Wayne's problems, oh no, but it has taken care of the immediate ones. Grief is fine.

And, okay, sure. Megamind will stay low-profile for a while, just long enough for Metro City's boy wonder to wrap his head around things. He doesn't mind the prospect of a break. Maybe he'll even do a little digging, see if he can't find Wayne's old space pod. It isn't Wayne's fault that his mother is an idiot, and besides, it will be nice to have Wayne owe him something.


	2. Part Two: The Unexpected

I never intended to write a second chapter to this, but then I started _thinking_. I really need to stop doing that. _ Guess this isn't a one-shot anymore – I thought of posting it as another one-shot, as a sort of follow-up, but we all know the two are connected and I figured, eh, might as well just post it as another chapter. Probably won't be another part after this one, though.

This bit is just supposed to give you an idea of how the childhood animosity between Wayne and Megamind might have begun to end.

…Is Megamind inherently angsty? Or is that just all I'm writing for this fandom? XD

**The Unexpected**

The ceiling gives way with a crash and the beeping that has been growing progressively louder for the past two minute cuts off. Megamind looks up, already scowling.

"Oh for crying out loud," he says, "this place is cold enough without you poking holes in it. Look, you're letting snow in."

Wayne blinks at him, hovering in mid-air, ready to fight and confused. "Sorry?"

Megamind waves a hand at him in an odd shooing motion. "Don't be _sorry_," he says, and turns back to his microscope, "I'm just saying. You could use the door, you know." He twiddles a dial, switches magnifications and refocuses, mutters something under his breath and makes a few marks in a notebook to the left of the microscope. There's another notebook lying open to his right.

Wayne's eyes narrow, and he comes down to float about a foot above the floor, still ready to dodge to the side or fly up at any moment.

Megamind doesn't seem to take any notice, and he also doesn't seem at all aggressive, which is unusual. Wayne drifts a little nearer, cranes his head to look over his enemy's shoulder just as Megamind jots something else down in the right-hand notebook.

"You keep two sets of notes?" Wayne asks. "Why?"

Megamind lifts his head, pressing his lips together. He does not appreciate being disturbed. "Practice," he says shortly.

"Practice?" Wayne squints at the left-hand notebook. "Is that – what is that, Japanese? What's it called, katanica or something?"

Megamind sighs loudly and puts down his pen, then turns back to look up at the other boy. "_Hànzì_," he says disparagingly. "It's Chinese. The word you were looking for is _katakana_, but that's a different set of characters, and yes, that's for Japanese."

Wayne only hears about half of that. "You speak Chinese?"

"You sound surprised."

Wayne just shakes his head. "I guess I shouldn't be," he mutters. "Just never really thought you'd go in for the whole 'language' thing. Thought you were more of a science-math person. I can't believe you speak _Chinese_."

"Yes, well." Megamind looks suddenly uncomfortable. "I don't speak it, exactly. Not _well_. I understand the spoken language, and I can read and write, but _speaking_ it is another matter entirely. The tonality of it is…complicated. But I _am_ learning," he adds quickly, suddenly defensive. "And I'm improving. I'm sure I am."

Wayne nods. "Yeah, great, sure," he says, and looks around, blinking and frowning. There's no hum of doomsday machinery, and the usual control panels are dark and quiet. The viewscreens all display what looks like a starry-sky screensaver – Wayne isn't sure if it's a screensaver or not; it looks kind of familiar, and the stars are magnified. "Um. I picked up a distress signal…?"

Megamind blinks once, as if puzzled. Then both eyebrows shoot up. "Oh, right!" he exclaims, and then he explodes into animation, shoving his chair away from his desk with both hands and enough enthusiasm to send himself and the chair squeaking across the concrete floor to the other side of the room, where he catches himself on the corner of a tall set of controls that reaches almost to the Lair's high ceiling. "I have something for you."

"What?"

Wayne watches in bewildered amazement as Megamind braces both hands on the armrests of his chair and swings his feet up, then stands. He hops from the chair to an open space on the darkened control station to a stepladder, scrambles up, then leaps from the ladder to the narrow crawl space between the top of the controls and the ceiling. Wayne is dimly aware that his mouth has fallen open. _Is he part squirrel?_

"Sorry, hang on," Megamind calls down. He's disappeared into the shadows near the ceiling, and Wayne can hear him rummaging around. There's a distant squeak, a muffled crash, and the distinctive _groi-oi-oi-oiyoiyoing_ of a hubcap or plate going round. "I had to hide it from Minion, or he would've started asking questions. And it's damned hard to lie to Minion, never mind that I don't like doing it anyway."

He reappears without warning, covered in dust and sneezing, but grinning from ear to ear. "Here we go," he says, sounding faintly pleased with himself. "Catch!" and he chucks something dirty-bronze and bullet-shaped in Wayne's direction.

Wayne's first instinct is to duck – the thing looks sort of like a bomb – but his nemesis isn't acting like he usually does when they fight. He isn't laughing maniacally, or touting some new and improved death-ray or doom machine. He's scaling ladders and studying microscopes and complaining about tonal languages.

Wayne catches the metal bullet just before it hits the ground, then looks up to where Megamind is blinking down at him.

"Is that a _thing_ with you, then?" Megamind wants to know. "Saving things just in the nick of time? Should I prepare for that in the future?"

Wayne looks back down at the bullet. _It's not a bullet_, he realizes, _it's a capsule_. "What is this?" he asks aloud.

"You don't – oh, jeez, right, you don't remember." Megamind throws his long body out into space and catches a rope that's coiled up near the ceiling, and swings for a minute before shimmying down to the floor. "That's yours. It's your shuttle. Piece of junk was a pain in the neck to find, but I finally tracked it down in August – I opened it up to look at the wiring, make sure it was still good, but I didn't touch any of the memory chips, I promise. Thought now would be a good time to give it back, what with it being almost Christmas and all. So." He's been speaking more and more slowly as he nears the floor, growing more serious. "Happy birthday, I guess."

He shrugs one shoulder, wheels his chair back over to his microscope. He has gone very still, and he sits down and picks up his pens. He doesn't look at Wayne again. When Wayne says nothing, Megamind adds, "It's all I can do."

Wayne opens his mouth, then has to close it again when he chokes. He stares down at the metal capsule. He isn't sure when it ended up clutched against his chest, but he can't seem to make himself let go. His knuckles are white and the hollow capsule should crumple under his hands, but it doesn't give like most metal does. It's the first thing he's ever held that doesn't break when he clings to it.

He finds his voice. It's higher than usual. "You – found this?"

It's so completely unexpected that it almost knocks him flat, and he hangs motionless in midair, just staring at the back of Megamind's head.

"Yes." Efficient Megamind is back. His voice is flat, and he's writing frantically in both notebooks at once. His shoulders are very tense.

Wayne wants to ask _why_, wants to dance, wants to shout, wants to – well, he _wants_ to fling both arms around Megamind and cry and thank him, but the thin blue creature is hunched in his chair with his sharp elbows tucked tight against his sides in a very obvious _don't-touch-me_ sort of way. And anyway that would be tremendously awkward.

But Megamind _knows_, Wayne realizes, _he knows what it's like_, he knows _exactly_ what it's like, and for the very first time Wayne feels like maybe they're not so different after all. And maybe Megamind isn't _quite_ as bad as Wayne has always thought.

But they're not friends, and there's still a deep and abiding sense of enmity between the two of them that cannot be completely ignored. So Wayne just says, unevenly, "Well, I…_Thanks_. Thank you."

Megamind bends his head lower, writes faster, says nothing. One hand moves up and down the page while the other moves from left to right, both scribbling in unison.

Wayne should go now, he knows he should, but he also knows that this subject will never come up between the two of them again and he _has_ to ask. "Do you, you know. Remember? Your parents?"

Megamind freezes. There's a _snap_ as one of his pens breaks. Dark ink spreads over the table, pools in his notebook, stains the fingers of one hand black. He lets out a long, slow breath, staring into the black ink. "I remember _everything_," he says sharply. "I remember everyone screaming, and I remember sirens blaring. I remember looking back as my planet was sucked into the gravitational funnel of a collapsing star, and the sirens cutting off just before I cleared orbit, and the silence that followed. And yes, I remember my parents."

A kind of shocked silence follows his words, broken only by the drip-drip of ink onto the floor.

"…I'm. I'm sorry." Wayne isn't sure what else to say. When Megamind had said he remembered _everything_, Wayne hadn't really thought about what that would mean. He had just envied his arch-enemy's ability to maybe remember something of home – he hadn't realized that Megamind might in turn envy _him_ his ability to forget.

Megamind nods slowly. "Yes," he says. "Yes, so am I."

Wayne dithers for a long moment. He can't just _leave_, not without trying to make things a little better. Finally he tries for a joke.

"I bet the fire drills at school freak the hell out of you."

Megamind snorts, then goes into a long, shuddering gasp of laughter that fades away as quickly as it comes. He turns towards Wayne just long enough to say, "Please go away."

Wayne floats quickly backwards, glad for once to be told what to do and hating himself for putting such a shattered expression on Megamind's face.

_In another life, we might have been friends_, he thinks, and that thought is enough to undo him entirely, and he turns then and flees, still holding his dusty, tarnished shuttle against him with both hands.

Half a week later, some joker at school pulls the fire alarm. It dings instead of blaring as it usually does, and Wayne catches Megamind's eye as they exit the building with the other students – Megamind nods coolly, but half of his mouth lifts into a wry smile before he can stop it.

Then he touches the button concealed at his hip, and half of the science wing collapses, and he bursts out laughing at the shocked look Wayne sends him. The other boy truly had not seen that one coming. Wayne drags him off to jail, but doesn't ask what would have happened if the school hadn't been evacuated. And he doesn't ask who pulled the alarm.

And if the new science wing is a damned sight better than the old one, and nobody can remember where the blueprints for it came from and half the funding for it is donated from an anonymous source (direct wire-transferred from a bank in Switzerland), what of it?

They aren't friends, not by a long shot, but they have reached a sort of understanding.

It's a start.


End file.
